Useit.com

Usability Assignment (due Nov. 9)

Useit.com > Participation Inequality

Article: “Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute” (October 9, 2006)

Summary:

This article is about how many people on-line are merely “lurkers,” people who just read or view information on a social network, blog or discussion board, without actually contributing to any interactive online feature. The percentages vary, as to which type of online destination is visited. Very few people are “contributors,” people who actually submit opinions, reviews, or informative data to the site. In general, the numbers are that 90% of internet users are lurkers, 9% contribute a little, and 1% is active users who contribute most of the information read at a site. All this information is on average.

Most people don’t contribute anything to a site, they simply read and observe what other people post. This is known as “participation inequality,” first studied by Will Hill during the 1990’s. These inequities between users as far as their participation to an interactive website goes, results in a biased understanding of the web community. There are strong differences as to why some people actively post a lot of content on a site, while many others (the majority) just lurks around and watches what others are talking about.

With the standard inequity ratio among online web communities being 90-9-1%, blogs have a bad participation inequality reflected in a 95-5-0 rule. With wikipedia.com, the inequities are worse as 99% of people who visit the site are lurkers. Amazon, widely known for its feature for people to post and read reviews, actually only gets reviews from 1% of its visitors to the website!

Problems with inequality, is that the samples represent a skewed portion of actual web users. The numbers account for just a portion of all of the people who are online, all of who are very different in their preferences, tastes, habits, etc. With any site, hearing from the same small percentage of people who actually contribute to the site can add many problems, such as an unrepresentative sample of customer feedback, reviews from a small number of the population (which cannot really be generalized), biased politics, search engine results based on popularity and number of links to the site instead of behavioral tendencies of consumers, and low quality postings which take away from the important information on a site.

Implications of the article:

The article implies that participation inequality is very common in the Internet world; and this is how it will always be. The majority of Internet users are lurkers. The article suggests that participation inequality is not something that can be overcome. There are some ways to come closer to equalizing it, however, such as: making it easier for visitors to contribute such as through a star-rating system instead of actually having to type out a review, making participation a side-effect with little to no effort such as simply clicking on preferences, allow readers the ease of editing a pre-created layout instead of having to make something themselves from scratch, and rewarding contributors, especially those who contribute quality material.

My opinion:

I DO agree with the author, partially because I have experience on both sides of the spectrum. I have visited websites as a “lurker,” reading postings, opinions and reviews left by other visitors. That is my regimen most of the time I am on a site- I think that my input is not really necessary, and therefore do not want to spend the time to write something out, unless it is something I am extremely passionate about. Most of the time, I feel that my input will get drowned out amongst a sea of people doing the same thing – writing on a topic; with many peoples’ opinions/contributions similar to each other, many times repetitive and not worth reading.

I also have a blog and interactive website/personal page, in which I would love to get viewer contributions. Counters tell me that people are visiting the site, but few leave any trace of their doing so, such as a comment or posting of any sort. I assume their actions are so, for the same reasons I do not post on blogs- because I don’t think it is of importance to my doing so, and I don’t want to waste my time. It could also be for their fear of anyone commenting back towards them, and criticizing what they posted. All in all, I do believe the author’s main message that many people simply visit websites and online communities to simply read and observe, without contributing input or opinions of any kind.

Assignment due 11/9: Clickz.com Article

“E-mail Resurges” – Kevin Newcomb (October 20, 2006)

Summary:

The article is basically about how e-mail has evolved since its inception. It’s an extremely valuable tool to marketers, as many marketers are realizing the high value in the use of e-mail to market. Once a “killer app,” e-mail is now universally applicable, and has the ability to bring together a whole company, in terms of integrating functions and helping the transfer of information between departments. It is a way to ease efforts in tying all departments together as a communication channel. People are beginning to realize that e-mail has more value than how it was perceived to have in its early stages.

E-mail is beginning to be seen as the “digital backbone” for marketers. It can be used for communication amongst the inner circle of marketers, as well as used to mass communicate to a large number of people through an e-mail list. This is great for PR announcements, news blasts, etc. Issues regarding e-mail are the effective design of the e-mail body, user experience in one’s viewing an e-mail, e-mail list growth and effectiveness in sending e-mail, deliverability and measurement standards of sending e-mail, building a commitment to e-mail of c-suite execs, and exploring integrations with other industry groups as well as exploring partnerships with them through e-mail. These issues are currently being explored and expanded upon.

There are interests in the use of the benefits of e-mail by major corporations, as well as niche companies. A company’s reputation can be perceived through their e-mails, by means of quality and e-mail delivery. People are more likely to filter away e-mails of unknown or disliked brands, and more likely to give some attention to those e-mails from companies with good reputations. It is important for a company not to release too much e-mail, for that can pose as an annoyance to the e-mail list recipients.

E-mail’s biggest roadblock is still, and always has been, spam. People are becoming more selective with e-mails, and their tolerance for spam can likely rub off onto other efforts of marketing from companies that they would potentially be interested in, which puts those companies at a harder position. However, it is still widely accepted that e-mail is becoming stronger in value as a marketing tool, as the e-mail and Internet become more comfortable to use for users and consumers.

My thoughts on this subject:

The reason I chose to write on this piece is because I agree with the author in that it is a very important marketing tool. I have had experience in the entertainment field, in which requires a lot of mass marketing of new media releases through e-mail. E-mail is convenient to use and a more efficient use of the company’s resources. It is a cheap way to get the message out to millions of e-mail list subscribers; with the only thing invested really is time to design the layout of the e-mail.

It's link to e-commerce:

This article does tie in to e-commerce, in that marketing is a part of the sales process. With almost all marketing e-mails, there is a link that directs the recipient to the company website. It is there that he or she has the ability to purchase a product or service, or become more informed of something of interest. E-mails allow a company to grab a target consumer’s attention towards a product they might be interested in, and from there, help them towards the site where the company can deliver to the consumer a better shopping experience. It is in that way that e-mail is very important to e-commerce.



Above: An e-mail I received from Sephora.com. It's design and layout was exceptional, and provided an online version of the Sephora store experience, including an array of many featured beauty products. There was an option to visit the site, leading the e-mail recipient towards possibly making an online purchase. Incentives to online purchases were offered, such as three free samples in addition to any online order made on Sephora.com.

With the e-mail service I use, Gmail (google mail service), there is an area to the right of each e-mail viewed that shows sponsored links. The links usually are related to the subject or content matter of the e-mail. For instance, the e-mail above from Sephora.com generated a number of beauty and health-related links such as a link to buy Philosophy brand products at drugstore.com, as well as one for American Beauty Cosmetics.

Guest Teachers on 10/26/06

The guest teachers that came in to teach us a lesson on Internet Marketing were really informative. They seemed to have a lot of experience in the computer and internet business, across a number of avenues. They went over key aspects of marketing in general, and later focused on direct marketing. They mentioned all of the ways that the internet is used in helping companies to directly sell or market their products and services. I learned of many useful websites as well. Two key things that I learned from the lecture that stood out are in regards to list databases, and the website Local.com, whose headquarters are situated in Orange County.

Local.com

The guy who worked for local.com explained to us that it was an “I.Y.P.” or internet yellow page service. It is an interactive services, that even offers user reviews and maps in addition to contact and location information of local businesses in any area. With local.com, one may search for local businesses, products and services. They have the option to do a business search, a people search, or a job search.

The most popular and the leader in regards to service-directory websites, is Super Pages. Superpages.com is a mixture of the yellow and white pages online, and the premier destination for those who want to locate a U.S. business, maps and driving directions, coupons, and order phone books. It is also a place for businesses to advertise and promote their business, as ad space can also be bought from this high-trafficked website.

I have already benefited from local.com, as I have found some local businesses and products that I am interested in, after having done a search using the website. I did a product search for “music” in the location “Long Beach, CA” and found many different record stores, music schools, and music businesses such as the music business registry. It was a very useful tool to help me find the businesses that are of most interest to me, as I am looking for someone who offers piano lessons locally, as well as great record shops.

http://www.local.com

http://www.superpages.com

Lists Developed for Direct Marketing

Direct marketing is that such as telephone marketing and direct mail like catalogs, envelope mailers, self-mailers and shared mail. We learned about addressable media, such as those personally addressed (ex.- Dear Samantha, check out this special offer we think you would like.), and mass media, which is just one standardized mail out format.

I thought it was awesome how companies can make their own lists, as far as who they want to send their mail to, or who they want to call. There are websites that offer services for a fee, to segment the customer or business information in their databases, and give you the ideal set of recipients for the direct marketing. This way, promotional tools or messages can be tailored to address the correct market segment. For example, a local 24 hour fitness can buy a list of contact information of people who shop at a near-by Trader Joes health food specialty store, or they can buy a list of people who attend the local Bally’s gym.

www.experian.com

It is amazing how a company can select the people or businesses they want to market to, and all the information is available. People at these list database companies are paid good money to constantly maintain the lists, so they are always trustworthy and useful. I plan on using the two services, an iyp and a list database service such as the ones we had learned about in class, in future business endeavors.